Saturday, 15 December

23:32

The Powering Past Coal Alliance announced on Friday that Sydney
and Melbourne had joined the Alliance at an event: Accelerating the
global coal transition. This follows the Australian Capital
Territory joining in September 2018. Other states and businesses
that joined at COP24 included Israel, Scotland, Senegal, and
Scottish Power. The Alliance, formed in Bonn in 2017 at COP23, now
includes 80

17:07

I was recently re-reading John B Alexander's book "Reality
Denied." (2017. Anomalist Books, San Antonio, Texas.) In
chapter one he relates his experiences working for Robert Bigelow's
National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS.) On page four,
Alexander writes of Bigelow "...NIDS was not his first foray into
supporting PSI research. For a time, Angela Thompson had done work
at the Bigelow Foundation..." I wondered just who Angela Thompson
was, so conducted some research.

"Dr Angela Thompson Smith's primary qualifications were in nursing
and social work in the U.K. She gained her BSc in Psychology at the
University of Wales, in Cardiff; her M.S. at the Facility of
medicine of Manchester University, England and later, her PhD. in
Psychology with Saybrook University, San Fransisco, CA. Dr Smith
continued her education with united Way of Southern Nevada/UNLV
where she completed the certificate in Non-profit management.

Dr Smith has a wide experience of research and management having
worked as a research analyst at the University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) and, later as a staff member with
the
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory, at
Princeton University, New jersey. In the southwest, Dr Smith became
Research Coordinator with the Bigelow Foundation and taught
professional; development courses through the University of Nevada,
Adult Continuing Education program.

Following five years as a staff member of PEAR (1987-1992) Dr Smith
was employed as Research Coordinator with the Bigelow Foundation
(1992-1994.) Prior to
The Bigelow Chair in Consciousness Studies at The University of
Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), before the Consciousness Research
laboratory at UNLV, and before the
National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) in Las Vegas,
there was the Bigelow Foundation. Incidentally, according to the
Secretary of Nevada business name search, NIDS is still
listed as an active business name as of 2018.

17:00

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekends
Quiz. The information provided should help you work out
why you missed a question or three! If you havent already done the
Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the
answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern
Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic
thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an
error.Question 1:

A national government can run a balanced fiscal position (taxes
equal spending) over the economic cycle (peak to peak) as long as
it accepts that, after all the spending adjustments are exhausted,
their strategy will ensure that households and firms overall spend
more than they earn that is, run down previous savings or
accumulate more net debt.

The answer is False.

Note that this question begs the question as to how the economy
might get into this situation that I have described using the
sectoral balances framework. But whatever behavioural forces were
at play, the sectoral balances all have to sum to zero. Once you
understand that, then deduction leads to the correct answer.

The trick in the question is that it invites a confusion between
the factual (accounting) statement a government deficit (surplus)
equals $-for-$ a non-government surplus (deficit) and the
proposition put.

The households and firms overall do not exhaust the
non-government sector. So what happens when the governments runs a
balanced fiscal position to the private domestic sector balance
(the households and firms) depends crucially on what happens to the
external sector.

To refresh your memory the balances are derived as follows. The
basic income-expenditure model in macroeconomics can be viewed in
(at least) two ways: (a) from the perspective of the
sources of spending; and (b) from the perspective
of the uses of the income produced. Bringing these
two perspectives (of the same thing) together generates the
sectoral balances.

From the sources perspective we write:

(1) GDP = C + I + G + (X M)

which says that total national income (GDP) is the sum of total
final consumption spending (C), total private investment (I), total
government spending (G) and net exports (X M).

Expression (1) tells us that total income in the economy per
period will be exactly equal to total spending from all sources of
expenditure.

We also have to acknowledge that financial balances of the
sectors are impacted by net government taxes (T) which includes all
tax revenue minus total transfer and interest p...

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